a rant

Ran across this article on the web today. Made me really annoyed at first–I mean, who honestly thinks that because marriage failure rates are at 50% the problem is with the institution of marriage? I quote: “Modern marriage doesn’t work for the majority of people. The rate of divorce has roughly doubled since the 1960s.” I wonder, could it be because since the 1960s our attitude toward marriage has changed? People used to marry in order to spend the rest of their lives giving as much as they could to the other person; now they marry to see what they can gain for themselves.
The [book] author’s thesis is that the institution of marriage is based on a capitalist system, and was developed for mutual good within that system. The author of the article points out that the institution of marriage has been around for thousands of years through many different types of government. She, of course, did not realize that maybe the reason marriage has been around for so long, maybe the reason people do desire to belong to one special person for the rest of their lives, maybe the reason even feminists can’t quite bring themselves to shrug off that “shackle” is because it’s written in our hearts. Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. God put that void in our hearts to drive us to Him, and to make sure we aren’t self-sufficient.
The author of the book also proposes “long-term, committed, non-monogamous relationships.” Yeah. Uh-huh. Right. What kind of love is that? It’s not! Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. Ok, humans will fail. But what person could choose to go into a relationship knowing that the other person had absolutely no compulsion to remain faithful–to anything! Only one who did not understand that, in the eyes of God, they are precious beyond compare.
Which brings me to my other thought. Today as I wrote a video script about compassion, I thought, but could not write, about the ultimate reason why we should show compassion: because in the eyes of God, everyone is valuable. From the most important executive to the homeless man outside my door, each is made in the image of God, and therefore worth much more than I can imagine. For that matter, I cannot believe that I am worth much in the eyes of God. Why me? Why, if I had been the only person in the world, would He have chosen to die anyway? I cannot understand it, but I am grateful.